As an ink-stained journalist, I doubt it ever will replace the printed page, but businesspeople of all types and home users will take to the World Wide Web in increasing numbers. The Internet will be as pervasive as the air we breathe … By year’s end, it will be a permanent fixture, and you will go through withdrawals if you are on the Net every day. Surfing will give way to serious Web diving.
In the future, few cash-strapped companies will be able to pay for their execs to cavort around Resorts ‘R’ Us for the latest conference. That’s why Sileo envisions a bright future for videoconferencing organizers. As the arranger, you’d set up the equipment, coordinate the times and dates of virtual meetings, and send out minutes to attendees when it’s over.
We might say that many people believe that the information highway will be used not just for passive entertainment, but for knowledge networking. Knowledge networking is the ability to find information, when information is needed. It is the ability to send a question to thousands of people around the world who share an interest in a topic. It is the ability to send electronic mail messages to friends and business associates around the globe.
Companies will be even more confused by all the choices, including interactive TV, computers in TVs, TVs in computers, and more. And big firms – which sell through magazines, direct mail, and catalogs – will seek advice from online consultants on how to best present content for their products or services using these various mediums.
Companies from all the industries are interested in the trend, that could result in the possible merger of entertainment, telephone, software and cable companies into new information-highway media conglomerates.
A policy of freedom will allow the Internet to evolve naturally and beneficially, becoming the paradoxical sum of its users involvement: a self-controlling, yet uncontrollable, functional anarchy.
The customs of the Internet must be applied to achieve a just result. Otherwise real-world law will serve only to create uncertainty as to the legal implications of the Internet activity, which will cause the anarchic new realm of communications to route itself around the law. A better result may be achieved by identifying the limited role of law, and restricting its application to that role … The Internet will not conform to regulation; regulation must therefore conform to the Internet.
One cannot predict the future with certainty, but it is probable that Skipjack will eventually be cracked … The second condition for the success of the Clipper chip, that it be accepted by the online community, will never be fulfilled.
I argue against the indiscriminate extension of government to the Internet … Due to the nature of the Internet, including its history, culture, amorphousness, and universality, it is quite the impossible to effectively regulate.
One idea being floated is to pay individuals a royalty each time a credit bureau, bank, marketer, medical records provider – in short any databanker – resells information from their digital dossiers.